A Mechanistic Theory of Consciousness

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3. Causation

An important implication which follows from this framework will be what we mean by causation. For the time being we can put aside the baggage that philosophers have added to the idea of causation. For now, we can define causation by saying that a Mechanism causes Output when presented with Input. Also, any system of matter can be considered the Output of one or more tasks. Thus, any system of matter, including any Input, will have a Causal History which includes all of the tasks that led up to that system and going all the way (at least) to the Big Bang.